Fiona Schulte

My research to date had been interested in the psychosocial outcomes of pediatric cancer patients, survivors and their families.  More specifically, I have been focused on quality of life and social competence deficits in pediatric CNS tumor survivors.  Preliminary work has included a review of the pertinent literature and investigations of factors that could be related to social competence in these survivors such as quality of life, sense of self, depressive symptomatology and body mass index.  This research resulted in the development of an intervention program to remediate social adjustment difficulties displayed by pediatric CNS tumor survivors. The findings from these trials inspired a multi-site randomized control trial of the intervention which yielded modest improvements in social skills following the intervention compared to a control group.  Currently, my research will focus on uncovering the mechanisms for social difficulties in pediatric CNS tumor survivors so that targeted interventions can be developed.